A former Google employee who resigned in 2015 has publicly criticized his former employer in a Reddit post alleging a “toxic” drinking culture within his team at the time that included sexual assault. Donald King worked as a Google software engineer from 2008 to 2015. King posted publicly on Reddit last week alleging he experienced a toxic drinking culture and sexual assault during those years. Liz Fong-Jones, an Asian engineer who worked at Google at the same time as King, wrote on Twitter that she could “personally corroborate many of
Timnit Gebru, a former leading artificial intelligence computer scientist that worked at Google before the firm fired her, has just set up her own firm, the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Google had fired Gebru when she published academic papers denouncing the tech giant’s AI’s work on large language models that help retrieve answers to controversial search inquiries. The firm, an independent artificial intelligence research institute, was awarded $3.7 million in funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kapor Center, Open Society Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Her company is
Google has teamed up with the University of Nairobi and Africa Centre for Advanced Technology to honor the 71st birthday of Professor Duncan Okoth Okombo in their latest Doodle illustrated by Kenyan artist Joe Impressions. The Doodle of Okombo was featured on Google’s homepage. His contributions throughout his lifetime, spanning 66 years, have pinned him as the founder of African sign language studies. In addition, the University of Nairobi held a virtual commemoration on the University of Nairobi’s YouTube Channel from 11.30 am. Speaking during the virtual commemoration the Vice-Chancellor, University of Nairobi, Prof. Stephen G. Kiama,
Google is taking applications for its seventh ‘Google for Startups’ accelerator program. Applications for the three-month virtual accelerator program are now open to technology startups located in Algeria, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The accelerator program launched in 2017 is designed to help Startups scale their solutions across the continent. Successful applicants from Seeds to Series A will gain access to free support alongside Google’s networks, advanced technology, experts, and mentors through virtual boot camps every
Google has just launched TaskMate, a crowdsourcing app that lets people use smartphones to do tasks and get paid, in Kenya after a year-long experiment in the East African country. This launch, however, is just the beta version. TaskMate joins a growing list of apps and services launched by Google that offer people local job opportunities such as taking a photo of a nearby restaurant, answering survey questions, or helping translate sentences from English to your local language. It also includes a rewards app that lets people get paid for filling out local services
The venture capitalist and American tech entrepreneur has spoken out on her journey into the industry and how she – and fellow founder Joey Womack – hope to level the playing field. Ms. Solomon, who acts as a managing partner of the investment firm ‘Collab Capital’, a fund that aims to close the funding gap for Black entrepreneurs, said: “The bruises were motivation, I didn’t want other people to have the same knocks that I had in my journey. “So, it was pretty clear to me what I needed to
Google for Startups has announced the next 50 recipients of its Black Founders Fund, unveiling the next slate of trailblazers who will be receiving $100,000 in non-dilutive funding. This is the second batch the giant tech firm has supported. All 126 of them hail from all over the United States, including Georgia, Texas, New York, Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, Hawaii, and Missouri. Last year, Google for Startups gave 76 Black-led startups up to $100,000 in non-dilutive funding – meaning founders did not give up any ownership in their company in exchange for
Ivan Beckley is a student doctor, host of The Bias Diagnosis, and co-founder and CEO at Suvera, a digital service helping clinicians follow up their patients virtually. Earlier this month, Google announced that Suvera was one of 30 Black-led startups selected for their $2 million (£1.5 million) European Black Founders Fund. I caught up with Ivan a few days after he sat his medical school final exams and asked him where it all began. “I became interested in the startup scene around the time I started medical school, I would
